The citizen whose emailed comment to the Metro Council was not read into the public record at a virtual meeting earlier this month—a technical oversight that apparently will require the council to reconsider a controversial settlement in the civil lawsuit filed by Alton Sterling’s children—has asked the council administrator and the parish attorney’s office to withdraw his comment.
Phillip Lillard, whose email opposing the proposed $5 million settlement in the case got stuck in a spam filter and was not discovered until after the Sept. 9 meeting, says he does not want to force the council or the public to have to endure another lengthy, contentious debate on a divisive, racially charged issue.
The lawsuit was filed in 2017 by Sterling’s five children, one year after the Black man’s high-profile killing by two white Baton Rouge police officers.
Besides, Lillard says, the council ended up nixing the settlement anyway.
“Why would I want them to reconsider something I was opposed to that failed?” he says.
But for now, at least, the council is moving forward with plans to rehear the settlement, according to Parish Attorney Andy Dotson, who says the measure will be reintroduced to the council at the Sept. 23 meeting and taken up for consideration Oct. 14.
The reason for the rehearing is a new state law, La. Rev. 42:17.1, that was enacted by the Legislature in May to address the procedures public bodies must follow when meeting virtually, as so many have done during the pandemic.
Among the provisions in the code is a section that requires public bodies to “properly identify and acknowledge all public comments during the meeting” and maintain those comments in a public record.
Does that mean every single email must be read aloud at every virtual meeting?
Yes, according to attorney Scott Sternberg, general counsel for the Louisiana Press Association and an expert in state open meetings law.
But Sternberg says the law is open to interpretation because it’s so new, and he says it’s not clear what to do with the fact that Lillard no longer wants his comment to be included.
“Do they have to have a rehearing? We don’t know,” Sternberg says. “If he withdraws his comment, I don’t see why they would have to have another hearing.”
But Sternberg says the more relevant question is why the Metro Council would be taking up such a sensitive and controversial matter at a virtual meeting to begin with, when the law limits public bodies to conducting only emergency and essential business at a virtual meeting.
“That’s the relevant question to ask,” he says. “I don’t see how this fits within the statute at all.”
Brandon DeCuir, an attorney representing the Sterling children, says his clients had concerns about the council’s decision to hear the settlement issue at a virtual meeting but did not object when Council member Chauna Banks placed it on the Sept. 9 meeting agenda because it had been pushed back so many times.
But he says he’s skeptical that they’ll take up the matter again in October, by which time the council plans to be meeting in person.
“I think they’re scared to have it and they’re afraid of the folks who might show up,” he says. “Do I think they’re going to tuck tail and hide behind another Zoom meeting? I do but I hope they prove me wrong.”
